umm ... we have a new client who shares a name with one of the hobbits attending bilbo's eleventy-first birthday. i laughed. only *one* other person joined in. 

as you can see, i don't really have anything to say today. 

after some running around yesterday morning, the kat and i went to the cohousing meeting. we got some more information about it and met some of the people involved. i'm quite interested in seeing where this is going. the only thing i'm not entirely enthused about is living in 'central' edmonton. *sigh* we shall see.  

the group has yet to pick out a spot for the development so it's possible that we'll end up in an area i like. besides, if my company makes the move to an edmonton-based head office, i'll be able to take transit anyway.  

i *really* like the idea of avoiding highway driving in the winter.  

i also met someone who's involved with an eco-village that's being developed near beaumont. i'd never heard of this kind of an idea.  

an eco-village is like cohousing, in that it's community-focused and environmentally sustainable, however it's more rural than urban. there's also an economic angle to an eco-village. from what i gathered in my short conversation with this woman (and i could be completely off-base) they seem to be a quasi-anarchist collective that lives off the grid, as it were.  

some of these same people are also involved with the North Country Fair. i think i might volunteer. the music looks good and there's a solstice festival immediately afterwards. i'll see if the kat can get more time off work   :D  

d'oh. i just googled ecovillage and found this. hmm. 

after the meeting, we stopped at padmanadi's for food, then headed over to our friend's place for hockey. ohhh, what fun!  

then, we left downtown and made our way towards whyte. i've never seen such a happy riot before. we were hanging around the chapters at 105 street and watched the carnage. given the number of exposed breasts, i've decided that the stupid gene does not reside on the Y chromosome.  

i took a few pictures with my camera. ta da!  

i think i saw four bonfires - one of which was *inside* a shopping cart hoisted above the crowd. there was a guy hanging off of the streetlight wire. there were idiots throwing things at the police.  

i'm glad i don't live there anymore.  :P  

remember how he was following Fearless Leader with his decision to ban media coverage of the arrival of soldiers' bodies in canada? earlier he said that our defense department was consulting with soldiers' families and that he was merely acting in accordance with their wishes. then, gordon o'connor (minister of defence) said, "No they weren't consulted." (cue circus music) 

actually, one of the soldiers' parents says she was told, "people have to stop focusing on how many people are being killed." 

...alll-ways look on the bright side of life da-dum, da-dum, da-da, da-da, da-dum. i guess you can "never forget" when you never knew in the first place. way to go, you conservatives, who purport to be the party that -ahem- supports the troops. canadians ought to be painfully aware of the horrors of war and we ought to know the costs. soldiers deserve better than to be hidden away when they become politically inconvenient. 

so do dead Afghanis. 

then there's kyoto. last month's Vanity Fair cover story was "A Threat More Grave Than Terrorism." the issue was devoted primarily to global warming and featured a piece written by Al Gore. (by the way mr. kat, i want to see An Inconvenient Truth.) i suspect Vanity Fair is pretty much on the money with their headline. 

anyway - harper says that canada isn't even going to *try* to attain the greenhouse gas emission reductions that we agreed to in the kyoto accord. our minister of the environment (hah), rona ambrose stayed for ONE DAY of the two-week UN Climate Change negotiations in germany. she was supposed to chair that conference. 

i'm no bloody genius, but aren't we bound to the kyoto accord under international law? whatever. harper has no intention of pissing off his corporate buddies. who cares about our image within the international community? 

from the conservative website's list of values: "A belief that Canada should accept its obligations among the nations of the world." right. 

i'm going to stop now. otherwise, i'd just start ranting about mandatory minimum sentences, *taxable* child care money, decreased media access to mp's ... rawr.

despite this, the idea of cohousing intrigues me. the kat and i are going to a meeting tomorrow afternoon. it looks like people are interested in getting a cohousing project in edmonton going. 

cohousing is not a housing cooperative, for those unfamiliar with the concept. in cohousing, you have title to your unit and have an interest in the corporation (like a condo). most cohousing projects are environmentally sustainable, foster community involvement and practice consensus decision making. 

i remember hearing about one of these in bc. it's called Windsong. at the time, i thought it sounded like a cool idea. even for someone like me.

you see, it's not that i hate people or socializing. i rather like human-human interaction. i just need a retreat. since each cohousing unit can have it's own small kitchen, i'd have a place to get away from people, but still have the option of seeing them at the main hall. hmmm.

i think i could do that ... even *really enjoy* that. 

tomorrow should be interesting. 

annnd we're going to see the third installment of the x-men movies. yay! mindless entertainment.

... i just looked at some news headlines. stephen harper called the deaths of 16 afghan civilians an "unfortunate accident." i'm not sure what was accidental about it - bombs aren't exactly discriminatory when it comes to killing. i think the people who decided to drop the bombs figured killing the taliban was more important than the lives of 16 civilians. i'm going to stop reading the news for now.

as i mentioned last week, the kat and i went camping. i sometimes felt like the token 'old person,' but it was fun overall. that is, aside from the token idiot who found it necessary to smack the axe into a living tree (repeatedly) and then burn ants with his lighter. 

that's when my mom-voice came out - i cannot stand people who fuck around with the nature they are, ostensibly, out to enjoy. rawr!

we went to see the da vinci code on monday. i'm not sure why there's so much fuss about this story. at this very moment, i'm having a conversation with a coworker who says, "i dunno why someone would want to add lies to the truth of Christ." i have subtly inserted into our conversation my beef with the idea that we should rely on translations of translations and innumerable levels of interpretation to, somehow, come to some literal belief in a version of a book. and - dude - she *agrees* with me! can i get a halleluiah? 

is anyone else annoyed with the blockade going on in caledonia, about an hour out of toronto? i'm a confirmed heinz-57, with ancestors from virtually every spat-upon european nationality plus some native canadian. i find myself siding with the aboriginals. i don't know. 

there's something about the county mayor implying that the aboriginals don't have to work because they get a government cheque each month and the 'leader' of the caledonia residents' association calling the protesters terrorists that ... rubs me the wrong way. 

geh. i can't honestly say that i know the ins and outs of the treaty in dispute, but the protest has brought out an awful racist element. the barricade was being taken down until people protesting the protesters (*sigh*) put up their own barricade and, basically, mobbed the aboriginals. 

certainly, there's been stupidity on both sides, but i think it's important for the canadian government to acknowledge their failure to serve the true needs of native canadians. 

apparantly, one person yelled to the Six Nations people, "go home!" stupidity indeed.

those of us with white skin are fortunate that we don't have to deal with the unrelenting weight of institutionalized racism. i really can't imagine what it's like.  *sigh*  dispossession, poverty, cultural exenteration ... and the non-native caledonians complain (violently) that they can't use the road and that they don't get cheques each month from the government. 

you don't just erase history from a person's perspective. look at the middle east. no one should be surprised or offended that a subjugated minority is angry.

i really hope that they're able to come to some sort of agreement. the escalating violence isn't going to help anyone. 

we're going camping this weekend and it occurs to me that i lack proper camping attire. geh. i should buy a pair of shorts so i'm not roasting in the ungodly heat we've been experiencing.

i bought tickets to see rob zombie july 31st. i don't actually know a lot of his music, but i'm pretty sure i'm in for a good show. he's rob zombie, after all.

my vegetarian meetup is at Cafe Mosaics tonight. vegan caesar salad, here i come! gods, i love that stuff. i think there are 7 of us tonight ... i wonder if we'll all fit. 

hmm ... i think today's a good day for a slurpee.  

i just thought i'd recount a moment of stupidity i encountered online today. there's this guy that i don't know and with whom i've never spoken who kept messaging me (with a bizarre level of familiarity as men who are desperate internet lurkers are wont to do). i ignored all 10 or 15 of his messages because, unlike him, i'm *not* looking for sexy chat sessions. 

then, out of the blue, i get, "WHORE BAG SCUM!" coincidentally, i felt combative at that moment, so i responded with the suggestion that most people would have taken the hint after the first few unanswered attempts at making conversation. 

then he tells me, "there aint to "hint" to give, cuz I"M not interested now .... your loss scum." he thought that my answer implied that i was interested. the illiterati strikes again!

has been added to my Reasons to Hate George W Bush list. his address about immigration screwed up my CSI Miami viewing experience. bah!

about that 17-minute long bit of nonsense ... it seems that this guy:

                  "doop dee doo..."

is "not going to militarize the southern border" by deploying 6000 national guard troops to patrol the border. mexicans are being given the opportunity to apply for residency legally. 

i like this thing where you can say that you're not doing something even though you actually are. that must be handy. let's see how this might apply at my job...

i'm not kicking you out of your apartment by giving you an eviction order. i've given you the opportunity to find free housing elsewhere.  

sweet.

my mla, bharat agnihotri received my email (see below) and *called me back.* the world has gone mad.  

anyway, we had a conversation about bill 208 (the one with the state-sanctioned discrimination) and he confirmed that the alberta liberals are "100% against" bill 208 and are doing what they can to prevent it from passing.  

and it seems that i'm not the only one who suspected dr. morton's bill was designed to buy political brownie points with alberta's Rednecked Bigots Club.

neoconservatives. bah.  

so this will probably annoy my libertarian ameri-kat: the NSA has collected a database of *billions* of domestic phone calls. at & t, verizon and bellsouth have provided calling records to the NSA since september 11th. i suppose suspecting *everyone* of al qaeda connections is intended to make americans feel safe. 

bah. a washington post poll found that 63% of those polled are ok with the government's data mining activities because they don't have anything to hide and fighting terrorists is more important than freedom. 

...and we're fighting terrorists over there to preserve our freedom over here 

...and i'm willing to give up my freedom 'cause it's important to defeat terrorism 

...and the troops = the government and al qaeda = saddam hussein and freedom of expression = treason

...<kneejerkreaction>SUPPORT THE TROOPS, YOU PINKO BASTARDS!</kneejerkreaction> 

...steven colbert hates freedom and the troops and he is NOT FUNNY

...and, gosh darn it, i'd rather *feel* safe than *be* free. bill o'reilly told me so. 

oh dear! my head's going to implode! didn't the terrorists succeed if people are, in fact, terrified? (and, obviously, panicky) 

how do you wake people up? 

i would like to give my official thumbs-up for Rio Grande Blood, the new Ministry album. i think, however, that they take the anti-bush thing a tad too far ... not that i don't agree with their opinion of that man.

i'm supremely annoyed with my premier and some jackass some other jackasses thought would be a good mla (ted morton, who just happens to be running for tory leadership). 

bill 208 is a thinly veiled attempt to allow discrimination against a minority by our provincial government. it's inappropriate for a marriage commissioner to impose his or her religious beliefs on a citizen of alberta. if two people of the same gender are lawfully permitted to marry, all governmental officials ought to perform their duties without discrimination. each albertan should expect equal treatment. 

and then there's the amendment to the school act. why should individual teachers be permitted to omit part of a curriculum that instructs students in the realities of alberta law? i don't think teachers should be expected to offer personal opinions on the matter, but it will only limit a child's grasp of reality and avoiding the subject implies some moral condemnation of same sex marriage, which, again, is institutionally sanctioned discrimination.

i'm appalled at this attack on human rights and i grow more and more frustrated with the holier-than-thou moralists in the legislature who find it necessary to subject the public to their particular brand of theology.

bah!

write to your mla. take the five minutes out of your day to participate in your civic duty. 

do it!

...unless your life is so interesting / fulfilling as it is that you can't be bothered to give a shit about other people. 

...c'mon. i know *you* aren't as self-absorbed as most humans. 

by the way, did anyone accidentally befoul their census forms? hmmm? i believe i promised candy to anyone who did. if you have yet to submit your census, lookie here for a reminder of what's required of you. 

it's *impossible* to have more fun than that. watching my census form's coffee spill dry out on the floor register gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

kat: if you're reading this, i'm at ruby's tonight. she's going to keep me company and feign interest in hockey.  :P

saul williams' statement, "there's a fine line between being vegan and being an asshole," is something i try to keep in mind. it's the kind of statement where "vegan" can be replaced with just about any other descriptor. 

it occurs to me that saying, "i'm vegan," is a lot like saying, "i'm christian." it's less a statement of identity than it is a statement of intention - an intention to try to be as close to an ideal as possible.

i was with some people last week who asked about my diet. i tried to emphasize my particular brand of pragmatic veganism. i pointed out the boots i was wearing. my boots are made of leather. i've owned them for about 8 years, which is quite some time before i went vegan. some vegans would say that i should get rid of them, not wear them, not glorify the wearing of a cow's flesh. whatever.

first, i love my boots. they're pretty. they've faithfully protected my toes in the fiercest of mosh pits. second, i don't think it's ethical to send perfectly good footwear to a landfill and then consume yet another product in order to conform to some other ideal. 

similarly, if you think it's more ethical to take public transit *and* benefit from the bus' tires that contain animal-derived stearates than it is to hunt down vegan tires and drive a car, take transit. 

veganism is about leading a compassionate lifestyle by making ethical decisions. 

my thank you at the top of this post goes out to Peter Singer, a utilitarian, who put the entirety of my random thoughts into *much* clearer language. 

if you read my last post, you know that there's a pile of stupidity happening at our other branch. incredibly, it's escalated to a whole new level.

one *very basic* requirement i have of my managers is: don't yell at the people you supervise - if you do, there had better be something horribly, horribly wrong. i.e.: you've seen four guys on horses and the apocalypse is nigh. 

another: don't threaten to or imply that you're going to fire an employee if you don't have the authority/grounds to do so.

so i have a manager who's violated both of these things. and i have to fix it. bah!

a new condo client came on today. it's in millwoods and has one of those ridiculous *named* streets. (all streets should be numbered, in my humble opinion.) for those unfamiliar with millwoods, it's a mess of crescents and cul de sacs heaped on top of each other. (much like a hamster entertainment centre.) i suspect some streets are named because 36, 36A or 36B Avenue may collide with 36A, 36B and 36C Street and that could cause road rage of leviathan proportions.

anyway, not even yahoo maps could find this millwoods address. hooray for mapquest. 

gah...

some people are not meant to be supervisors. i have to do something about the other office. *sigh*  something that doesn't include my boot up someone's ass. i swear: if t.i.w.c.m.a.i. provokes any of the support staff to quit, she's on my shit list and *that* is not a good place to be.

but, i'm loath to recruit a new manager. damn! damn! damn! 

i suppose i'll have to make nice, mediate, find consensus, etc. meh!

she was supposed to come back from her vacation in san francisco today. i spent monday and tuesday fielding angry calls from people who were promised various things ... on monday and tuesday. i managed to fend them off with promises of t.i.w.c.m.a.i.'s return on wednesday. 

*feigns shock* she didn't come back. she supposedly missed her flight yesterday and is now on standby waiting for a plane.  X(  the crazies keep calling. my head hurts 

do you remember Tiny Toons? babs and buster bunny et al... 

well, there was a tiny toons movie, which featured a hitchhiking serial killer (i think) named Mr. Hitcher. well, if you know what i'm talking about, you'll probably be amused.  

there was a guy who looked EXACTLY like mr. hitcher mowing a lawn. i could barely contain myself.  

hey rachel ... *bunny burgers!*    :P   

i should go now. 

colbert, as the "mega-american," "lincolnesque" conservative pundit he plays on his show, the colbert report, jabbed bush and the press (whom he called clowns) mercilessly. except for fox. because fox "gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side." awesome. no wonder the audience wasn't laughing. no wonder they didn't find his routine newsworthy.  

read the transcript here.  

the weather is abominable. i did not expect to see *snow* hitting my window this morning. plus, it's windy as hell. i wish i'd worn a longer skirt. (cold knees. just the knees though. the boots take care of the calves.)  

i'm also stuck at the edmonton office (again) and forced to edit my stupid blog in notepad. bah - slowness. i'm hungry too. and whiney. and bored. shoot me now. 

am i alone in my understanding of alberta's condo-related legislation? did my cohorts sleep through the ridiculously easy Real Estate 1000 course? i think so.  

i won't bore you with all the details, but i definitely had the urge to strangle one of those puerile halfwits this morning.

the kat's birthday stuff went well. people came over on friday and consumed far more alcohol than should be allowed. (MidEvil was turned into a drinking game) thankfully, they had the good sense to sleep it off at our house. on saturday, we went to Padmanadi with the family and ate far more than should be allowed.

by the way, if you like indonesian/taiwanese food, you should check out Padmanadi. i love that place. (*and* it's a vegan restaurant, so we can order from the entire menu.)